Star Trekis exploring the full, harrowing truth of being a Starfleet Security Officer in the newRed Shirtscomicseries from IDW Publishing, which debuts this week, and the preview for the first issue offers an eye-opening glimpse at the full potential for gore baked into the book’s premise.
Star Trek: Red Shirts#1, written by Christopher Cantwell, with art by Megan Levens, opens with the startling image of a Red Shirt having his face graphically clawed to shreds by thealien beast known as a Mugato.
The character, Ensign Miller, survives, and is branded “lucky” for a Red Shirt, considering he only lost an eye.
Star Trek Is Exploring Starfleet’s Full Potential For Bloodshed In “Red Shirts”
Star Trek: Red Shirts#1, Written By Christopher Cantwell; Art By Megan Levens; Available This Week From IDW Publishing
This opening scene sets an immediate, and appropriate, precedent for the series, which is set to explore the lives ofTrek’snotoriously short-lived Red Shirts, who operate on the front lines ofStarfleet’s most dangerous missions. And if that weren’t enough,Red Shirts#1 quickly moves on to a montage of even more brutal deaths to establish its tone.
This is the selling point ofRed Shirts. The series has the potential to explore the truly violent reality of this infamousStar Trektrope in a thrilling new way
In a sequence of nine panels,a string of unlucky Security Officers are shown being shot, blown up, vaporized, eaten by giant bugs, thrown off cliffs, and in two particularly gruesome instances, having their heads fully crushedby robots and aliens. “Yes, we all have a shelf life,” Ensign Miller grimly narrates.
Of course, this is the selling point ofRed Shirts. The series has the potential to explore the truly violent reality of this infamousStar Trektrope in a thrilling new way. For the most part,Trekhas been beholden to the standards and practices of major network television, but now IDW is boldly going where no TV show could before.
Red Shirts Is An Overdue Look At The Lives Of Starfleet’s Most Endangered Officers
Exploring The Brief Lives And Violent Deaths Of Starfleet Security
The idea of Red Shirts being synonymous with frequently ill-fated minor characters goes all the way back toStar Trek: The Original Series, and it has become a ubiquitous term in popular culture. Those unnamed characters who get killed off quickly and graphically? “Red Shirts,” no matter what the story is.
Yet over the past sixty years ofTrekhistory,the franchise has rarely taken advantage of the dramatic potential for these characters beyond just their utilitarian use in the story.Red Shirtschanges that, and the result is already shaping up to be as emotionally resonant as it is action-packed and gore-filled.
Red Shirtscenters the characters with themost dangerous job in theStar Trekuniverse, and it is not shying away from the implications. The series will go to some dark places, but in the process, it will shed new light on the lives of the “expendable” crew members whoStar Trek’smain characters and fans take for granted all too often.
Star Trek: Red Shirts#1will be available June 17, 2025 from IDW Publishing.
